With almost no compliance from growers on our current cannabis cultivation ordinance, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors is looking into crafting a new ordinance which would undo the few environmental protections that made it into the current ordinance. For instance, the proposed new ordinance allows for more new grows in forest habitat. The last thing we need in Humboldt County is more new grows in forest habitat. Destroying forest habitat to grow pot is like killing whales to make Greenpeace stickers. There’s something wrong with this picture, folks.

I don’t like the sound of it either. The new proposal would allow growers to use generators to power lights in rural greenhouses, so long as they get 80% of their power from renewable sources. This cuts no mustard with me. If I can hear your generator, you’re an asshole who should be run out of town on a rail. I don’t give a damn how many solar panels you have, you are still an asshole, and the County damn well better do something about it because otherwise I’m going to blow your motherfucking head off with a shotgun, and we don’t need any more of that kind of violence around here.

You don’t need electricity to grow weed. If you do need electricity to grow weed, there are plenty of places with flat land and convenient grid power, and you should move there, because the people who grow pot on flat, fertile land, convenient to public utilities, will put you out of business if you don’t. Most growers, who want to stay in the game, post-legalization, probably should think about moving somewhere flat and sunny, with grid electricity, on a major highway.

Now is the time to decide whether you want to be a rich pot farmer, or a poor forest gnome. If you want to be a rich pot farmer, find some land that’s suitable for agriculture, preferably in some other county, and go big. If you want to live here in the forest, then make that your priority, and realize that you’ll probably need to find some other way to make a living. Unless you’ve been spoiled rotten by your drug dealing parents and have grossly unrealistic expectations, that shouldn’t be too hard.

On the other hand, I like some aspects of this proposed new ordinance. I especially like the idea to license businesses for on-site cannabis consumption. I think it’s about time that Humboldt County growers start catering to cannabis consumers instead of drug dealers. Growing and dealing cannabis is all about money, which is boring and banal, like most growers and dealers, but cannabis culture really flourishes when cannabis consumers come together, express themselves, and interact with each other in public places. I think we need on-site consumption in Humboldt County, and I think we would do it well.

Humboldt County culture has been largely shaped by cannabis consumption. Our heritage of alternative energy and building technologies, raising money by throwing wild parties instead of with taxes, and our hedonistic history of free love and running naked through the woods testify to the kind of free-thinking creative ingenuity that cannabis use inspires. Who better than us would know how to design the kind of environment that enhances the cannabis experience?

On-site consumption opens up the whole world of cannabis culture and lifestyle. On-site consumption brings food, decor, art, music, entertainment and fashion into the cannabis industry, creating a lot more economic diversity in our community than a simple agricultural commodity ever could. This kind of direct connection makes the Humboldt brand tangible to consumers. We need on-site consumption for cannabis tourism too. We have a lot to offer cannabis tourists, and I think cannabis consumer tourism will look a lot different from the drug dealer business trips that we see today.

Drug dealers don’t like adjoining rooms in hotels, but don’t complain about the quality of overpriced food. Cannabis users care more about the quality and price of the food, and would rather camp than stay in a hotel. Drug dealers keep a low profile and spend liberally, while cannabis consumers don’t mind looking a little freaky, or complaining about being overcharged. We get plenty of both here, but we should make sure to remember that cannabis consumers, not drug dealers, drive the cannabis market. The less time we spend catering to drug dealers, and the more time we spend with people who work real jobs and buy cannabis with their hard-earned cash, the better we will understand what customers want in a cannabis product, and the more opportunity we have to connect with customers in a way that builds brand loyalty.

Of course, to earn that kind of loyalty, cannabis consumers have to like us. To make them like us, we need to make sure that cannabis consumers have a good time while they are here, whether they show up for Reggae on the River, or blow into town around harvest season. If we want cannabis consumers to patronize our product for the rest of their lives, we had better treat them right while they are here.

That’s an important lesson we need to learn as we step out of prohibition and into the free market. We’ve gotten used to the black market, where government policy props-up prices and limits competition, but in the free market, consumer choice, not government policy makes the difference between success and failure.

I’m sick of news stories about marijuana where the whole story seems written around puns about getting high. Aren’t you? I thought legalization would put an end to that shit, but no. Just the other day I heard this on the radio:

“The recently passed initiative to legalize the recreational use of marijuana seems likely to spark up a controversy with law enforcement as the buzz created by Proposition 64 leaves county and state officials dazed and confused.”

Why do they do that? Why can’t they report a story about marijuana without somehow inserting their derogatory stereotype of stoner slang? What if they covered other news stories that way?

The cops took a shot in the dark, and another unarmed African-American man died at the hands of police last night. Officers raced to the scene of a suspicious character complaint, where 27 year old Leroy Jackson was gunned down on sight. The complexion of this case mirrors a string of recent police shootings which Chief Clinton Swinehart insists were “unfortunate but necessary.”

Or how about:

The Dow went poo today, losing over 200 points in an across the board sell-off.

Or maybe:

The president stood erect at the lectern and delivered the hard truth to the American people.

Do we need that? Do we need a subtext of juvenile wordplay to distract us from the news? If they don’t do it on other stories, then why do it in stories about marijuana? Do writers and editors really think that stories about marijuana are so insignificant that it is OK to subvert them just to show-off how clever they can be with words?

Just wait. When the Trump administration starts executing journalists, us pot smokers will have our revenge. “Well, we can write him off!” or “Hey, it looks like they strung-up another stringer,” we’ll say to each other with a chuckle, between tokes, huddled in our darkened basements, while we wait for the radiation to clear.

Close to a million people get arrested for marijuana every year in the US. Almost a million people are still in prison for for it right now. Even in California, it’s still legal to discriminate against pot smokers, and to drug test employees for cannabis. Workman’s Comp claims still require a drug test, at the time of the injury, and testing positive for marijuana will disqualify you, even though the test does not, in any way, indicate impairment.

The War on Drugs is serious shit. It’s no joke. It kills people and it destroys people’s live. How do they not see that? How do they not see the violence? How do they not see the racism? How do they not see the oppression, but never miss an opportunity to roll in some half-baked puns about stoners getting high. I think it’s about time those reporters opened their eyes and took a proper gander at what they’ve become, because it isn’t pretty.

What People Say:

If you haven't read john hardin's blog before, prepare to be shocked. I always am. (I can't help but enjoy it though...at least when I'm not slapping my hands on my computer desk and yelling at him.) He's sort of a local Jon Stewart only his writing hurts more because it is so close to people and places I love. Kym Kemp
...about, On The Money, The Collapsing Middle Class
... I think he really nails it, the middle class is devolving back into the working class. Pretty brilliant, IMO. Juliet Buck, Vermont Commons http://www.vtcommons.org/blog/middle-class-or-first-world-subsistence
BLOGS WE WATCH: John Hardin’s humorous, inappropriate, and sometimes antisocial SoHum blog is a one-of-a-kind feast or famine breadline banquet telling it like it is—or at least how it is through Mr. Hardin’s uniquely original point of view with some off-the-wall poetic licensing and colorful pics tossed in for good measure. For example, how it all went from this to that and how it all came about like the hokey pokey with your right foot out. You get the idea. Caution: this isn’t for everybody, especially those without a bawdy, bawdry, and tacky sense of humor. You know who you are. We liked it. (From the Humboldt Sentinel http://humboldtsentinel.com/2011/12/16/weekly-roundup-for-december-16-2011/)